The success of the ritual greatly depended on when it was released. Were this 1998, this movie would have been a super scary story about 4 men lost in the woods encountering really strange phenomenon that may or may not be supernatural. Unfortunately, The Blair Witch Project owns that corner, and burst onto the scene like a force of nature, creating countless knockoffs, which The Ritual is now among. Is this a good or bad one? It’s somewhere in the middle.
It should have been 5 men walking in the Swedish Norway hiking trails, but Luke (Rafe Spall) failed to act in a situation that left the group’s mutual friend Rob (Paul Reid) dead. Now Luke and his buddies Phil (Arsher Ali), Hutch (Robert James-Collier) and Dom (Sam Troughton) hike to honor the guy. After Dom hurts his knee, the gang decide on a “shortcut” through the woods to get to a hikers’ cabin. However, that shortcut turns into a physical and psychological nightmare as the group realize that they might not be alone in their journey.
Let’s get down to brass tax: The Ritual is scary in parts but doesn’t quite build to a rousing climax. The reason Blair Witch’s conceit works so well is because the story builds the dread little by little until the end where you are on the edge of your seat worried for the kids and what might happen to them. The Ritual does the buildup thing pretty well. Using the Jaws method of withholding, the movie gives us some creepy imagery of animal slaughter as well as terrifying ritual type setups of places of worship. The smartest move by the movie is realizing that the focus of the story is the men, mostly Luke, so we get images of the psychological torture this creature puts upon these men, forcing you to relive your deepest darkest fears over and over again. Perhaps there’s a deeper meaning of the dreams as a metaphor for when you died, but I don’t think The Ritual is going for something super deep here. You can feel the story going by the numbers, picking off the least developed team member and then moving onto the next one. By the time we get to see the creature, it is handled pretty smartly, casting it as imposing and covered in creepy shadow, but the movie loses steam the more it reveals to the audience.
The reason for the draining of tension is yes, the by the numbers storytelling. However, The Grey did this exact same idea, of people being picked off one by one and was very compelling and stayed with me for a long time. I thought about this, and I’m pretty sure it’s because the movie took its time developing the characters we know are probably doomed but grow to care about anyways. The Ritual really only cares about Luke and a little bit about Dom. We get minor moments of tension between the group over what happened to Rob, but in general we get no character development for any of these people outside of Luke. Not caring about the characters is the biggest flaw of a horror movie, because it will zap the tension away from your story. Sadly, The Ritual forgets to develop anyone that’s not Luke, and we all suffer boredom because of it.
Unfortunately, I think the most memorable thing about the ritual is how unmemorable it will be to people. I’m seeing the names now: The Blair British Project. The Swedes Have Eyes. I’ll spare you more garbage puns, but if your movie is simply decently made and decently thought out, that’s simply not good enough to be memorable with all the choices out there. Sorry dudes, maybe bring some Swedish or Norwegian women with you next time…